Six Steps to Better Email Outreach

I picked up lots of gems here at the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit.  Here are a few from Sherpa Anne Holland herself:

1.) Opt-ins – make it easy for people to sign up to hear from your nonprofit right on your home page.  Don’t make them have to hunt long and hard to find how to sign up, or go to through many steps and pages to do it.

2.) Welcome messages – Only half of folks they surveyed welcomed new sign-ups within 72 hours.  You can stand out just by saying hi and starting a conversation once people do opt-in to hear from you.

3.) Transactional emails – People open them at much higher rates than anything else.  Of course – they want their receipt or to track their stuff if they’ve bought something.  So when you receipt (and I hope, thank) donors, you might consider putting in a bit of nice additional content.  I wouldn’t ask for more money right then because donors are tired of that, though.

4.) Reputation – from AOL to Earthlink to Yahoo!, providers are sorting spam by the reputation of the organization sending the mail.  Even though you’re a nice nonprofit, you might get blocked if you’ve had too many bounces or unsubscribes from your emails.  So think about slashing your list so it’s just made up of people who really want to hear from you, and consider being more careful about sharing it with people who might spam your supporters.

5.) Design and rendering – Did you know half of all folks 25-54 have images blocked on email by default?  Wow.  And a high number of folks read all their email in preview panes.  MAKE SURE your emails appear right.  It turns out when people get an email with a funky layout or blocked images, many think it’s spam.  Second, make sure that if your images are blocked, there is something interesting to read so you don’t lose people.  Third, put what’s interesting at the top and at the left so people can see it in preview.

6.) Landing pages – Sherpa says they give you the best bang for your buck. So don’t just write great emails.  If people click through, make sure the place they go is very compelling.